


you better back your shit up

by ohmyheichou



Series: Kink Meme Fills [2]
Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Community: snkkink, Kink Meme, but we focus on jean for the most part, connie and mikasa are mentioned, cue cute friendship, eren is a cutie in human and titan form, so jean stops being scared of him
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-26
Updated: 2014-05-26
Packaged: 2018-01-26 13:36:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 851
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1690211
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohmyheichou/pseuds/ohmyheichou
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everyone is afraid of Eren. Jean is too, until he realizes that Eren is still the reckless idiot he trained with.</p>
            </blockquote>





	you better back your shit up

**Author's Note:**

> The title is a lyric from Panic! at the Disco's song "London Beckoned Songs About Money Written By Machines."
> 
> This is a fill for a kink meme prompt, which you can find at http://snkkink.dreamwidth.org/8414.html?thread=6727390#cmt6727390.

As far as Jean is concerned, Titans are just Titans. They are monsters who devour humans, nothing more, and nothing less. The discovery of a shifter, then, comes as a surprise.

For a moment, Jean is just baffled by the fact that Eren’s alive. And maybe just a little bit happy about it, not that he’s going to tell anyone. But then he realizes that if Eren was inside that Titan, then that means Eren was the one to cause all of this destruction. It’s hard for him to reconcile the monstrous and brutal Titan with the somewhat dense and often suicidal Eren he knows.

When Eren is in his human form, it’s all too easy for Jean to forget that he’s a Titan. So he interrogates Eren and places the weight of his world on his shoulders, because _someone_ has to lay down the law. They need his abilities and they need them to be reliable. But ultimately, he’s just angry that this suicidal bastard now has immunity, while the rest of them, normal human beings who bleed and have dreams that will never be accomplished--

He’s just angry. He misses Marco. He wants his death to mean something.

*  
*  
*

It’s hard, too, for Jean to step out of his own selfish thoughts and look at what other people are doing. But look he does, and he sees how everyone flinches away from Eren. He sees the way they subtly lean away from him, the way no one voluntarily sits at his table, the way people who pass him in the halls give him tense smiles and hurry away. Mikasa is the only one who treats Eren in the same way. He might be a 15 metre killing machine who can regenerate entire limbs, but to Mikasa he will always be someone she needs to protect. Even Armin looks at Eren differently now, as if he’s a valuable asset to humanity and not the friend he’s known all his life.

So yeah, Jean knows that Eren is a Titan, and he knows everyone is afraid of him now. He doesn’t say anything though, because he’s still angry. And if he’s honest, he’s afraid of Eren too. He was always so easy to anger, and now that he’s a Titan...

*  
*  
*

One day, Hange is performing more experiments with Eren, and Jean somehow gets assigned to the group watching him. He’s heard of the Spoon Incident, and how Levi’s squad apologized for not trusting Eren, but he sees how they are still wary of him. To them, he will always be a Titan. They needed to placate him, but they will never truly trust him.

The experiment today is relatively simple. Hange just wants Eren to pick up several large logs and drive them into the ground, evenly spaced, the way one would build a fence. The experiment is going well, too, until the Titan trips on one of the logs and falls down, sending several people flying. Jean can’t believe his eyes. He can’t help scoffing and thinking, _wow Jaeger, you’re even clumsier than usual. Didn’t think it was possible._

After that, it’s like a switch has been flipped. Jean finds himself angrily yelling at Eren’s Titan form to “man the fuck up” because he’s “even more useless than usual, and that’s saying something.” On one notable occasion, he storms up to his Titan form, kicks the over large foot, and shouts, “Four times three is twelve, idiot, not thirteen!” Large green eyes glare down at him, but Eren reaches out and changes the clumsy 13 written in the dirt to a 12.

*  
*  
*

Connie tries, Jean can see that, but it’s hard to fight a fear and a hatred that has been ingrained in the collective consciousness of humanity for a hundred years. So it doesn’t really surprise him that one day, when Mikasa and Armin are carrying an unconscious Eren indoors, Connie asks him, “How do you do it?”

“How do you act like that Titan’s just Eren?”

Jean thinks about it, and it’s a little hard to answer. When had he started seeing Eren’s Titan form as just a bigger version of Eren? “I don’t know, really. I guess it’s because it is Eren. He’s still an idiot. In fact I think he’s even dumber as a Titan.”

Connie gapes at him like he just sprouted horns. “What?”

“Yeah, did I tell you about that time he tripped and fell on his ass while in Titan form? Still a dumbass. Still a suicidal bastard.”

*  
*  
*

Eren tries to thank him, once, and in the beginning it is the most awkward thing Jean has ever had the misfortune of going through.

He’s sitting outside the barracks one night, thinking about Marco instead of sleeping like he’s supposed to be, when Eren comes outside and sits down beside him. “Jean.”

“What.”

“I, uh, I wanted to thank you. I --”

“You don’t have to explain, asshole.”

Eren flushes red as he gets to his feet and exclaims, “Fuck you too, Kirschstein!” 

But he’s smiling as he goes in, and Jean can’t help smiling back.


End file.
